Drastic Changes
by ocean-at-summer-sunset
Summary: Cammie's dad died in a car accident. Her mom met Joe. Joe was abusive. As you can see I suck at summarys. Please read and review.All normal, no spies. ONE SHOT ONLY!


_**Drastic Changes**_

_She wrapped the sweater tighter around her thin frame. The worn brown knitting was thin and offered little protection against the chill that was slowly creeping along her skin. _

_ Tangled blond hair with reddish brown highlights was swishing against the nape of her neck. Her face was drawn and tired, her skin pale in the faint moonlight._

_ The thing that caught your eye the most though, were her eyes. They were large and looked completely black in the frosty air. They were two bottomless pits and they made you wonder why she looked so empty, just a worn out shell of a person. _

_ A pale white piece of paper fluttered through the air. Flipping and spinning in the October breeze, it landed in front of the girl. She stopped her brisk walking and bent down to pick it up. She stood up and adjusted a stray lock of her that was blowing in her face before straightening the paper and scanning the words._

_ Startled over the contents, she dropped the paper and stepped back a few steps. She regained her composure and picked the paper up again. The breeze picked up and the paper flew out of her hands, she grabbed for it, but it was lost to the wind. It flipped in the frigid wind before getting caught in a tree where anyone could plainly see the bold black words:_

_Watch your back. – J_

_**LATER … (GIRLS POV)**_

_The note had scared me. I had thought that I was done with that one chapter of my life, that he was gone. He had always scared. With his dark hair and the air of cruelness that had seemed to float around him in a solid wave whenever you walked into room. I never knew what my mother had seen in him, how she could love him, how anybody could love him. But she did._

_ Ever since Dad had died, she hadn't had as good of a judgment as she had used to. Ever since that tragic car accident, she had shut down. She didn't let anyone into her heart again, until he came along. He had seemed so nice at first; always bringing her gifts and flowers. I had seen right through his act. I didn't say anything, though, because she was happy._

_ Before __**him**__, she used to sit in her rocking chair by the widow for hours, waiting for Dad to come home in his red Cadillac, to jump up the porch steps and fold her up in his warm embrace. He never did, and she couldn't process the fact. My mother got even worse after __**he **__left her._

_ Now all she did was sit in that chair, waiting for one of them to come in through our front door. It seems like she could only think about them._

_ The cold wind cut through my thin sweater like knives, I would have to get a new one. I marched through my front lawn, through the unkempt grass and dandelions that covered it. The once yellow paint was peeling away from the worn boards of the structure. The front door creaked as I opened it and the handle felt like ice in my hand._

_ "Mum, I'm home," I called. She didn't answer, I didn't expect her to, she never did. I walked into the room where she sat in her rocking chair by the window._

_ She was still waiting, and I that point I wasn't sure who for. The chair groaned and squeaked as she rocked. Back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. It used to be a bright cherry red chair, but like her the happiness had faded from it over time._

_ It hurt me to see her like this. Her face, once beautiful, was pale and her lips were set in a thin line. Her washed out blond hair was streaked trough with grey. She looked so frail and weak, like the entire world had been riding on her shoulders for so long and she couldn't handle anything more. I was really worried; she wasn't eating as much anymore and had taken to spending the night in her chair._

_ When I was younger I had always thought that my father would somehow, miraculously come through our front door and pick up the pieces of the broken shell of my mother. I thought that he would put her back together. For years, she and I would sit by that window together, both of us drowning in sorrow and hoping that he wasn't dead and the police and paramedics and doctors were all wrong about the fatality of the crash._

_ Eventually I came to terms with the truth, but my mother had never really seemed to accept it. She couldn't deal with the facts and lived under a false truth. It was getting to her._

_ I laid a hand on her shoulder and hers came up to meet mine. Her shoulders shook and I knew she was weeping about the two men who had left her. One in death and the other in cruelty and spite. _

"_Would you like some soup?" I asked her gently. I had stopped trying to get her to face reality a long time ago. I remember the first time I had tried, a year after the crash. She had gone into denial, screaming and throwing pillows and crashing dishes against the floor, hot, wet tears streaming down her face while she screamed obscenities at me. She had eventually broken down and sank to her knees amid a sea of cotton stuffing and shards of white pottery. Tears were pouring out of her eyes and I was immediately by her side, rubbing her back in slow comforting circles. I had tried only one more time, last year. I had, had a particularly bad day that day and I had come home screaming at her, shouting about how she couldn't go about her life sulking and evading the truth. I had shouted something that I knew I never should have said, I said the he was dead, D-E-A-D and I had asked why she couldn't get that through her thick skull. I never tried to convince her again._

_ She nodded in answer to my earlier question and I gave a quick squeeze to her hand before letting it go. The heels on my boots clicked softly on the tile as I grabbed a can of soup and poured the golden liquid into a saucepan._

_ Soon the liquid was bubbling and I poured it into two bowls. I pulled a bowl of sliced fruit from the refrigerator. I pulled another pot of boiling water off the stove ad made two cups of chamomile tea. Setting everything on a tray I clicked back to the living room. I set the tray on the coffee table and handed my mother her soup. I pulled a soft wool blanket over my knees and sat cross legged in the big easy chair that had belonged to my father._

_ She took a few spoonfuls of the soup and some color returned to her cheeks._

"_Abby visited today." She stated bluntly. Abby was my aunt and she was who I went to when I needed help with anything. She had offered to move in but I had declined, glad for a break from the smothering parental figures. Over time that gladness had faded and I grew to look forward to those visits. They happened less and less, and it seemed the more I wanted her there, the less she thought we needed her._

_ By the time we finished our dinner, my mother almost looked like her old self. Then she did what surprised me. As soon as she took the last gulp of broth she got up and collected the dishes before taking them to the kitchen and beginning to wash them. I dashed up and into the kitchen._

"_I'll dry. Mum, what happened?" I asked, amazed._

"_You and Abby reminded me of something today; I can't let two men who aren't here anymore run my life. You were so gentle with me when you got home, you should be so angry at me and you aren't. I don't want to feel like I'm so weak that I have to rely on my seventeen year old daughter to live. You stay out so late every night and I was my old self I would yell at you. Sometimes I feel like that's why you do it, so I can yell at you." She cried._

"_Yeah it is, it seems like we've both been to forgiving lately. Maybe we need some drama around these parts." I said, chuckling._

"_I say that tomorrow we clean up this place, your father would be ashamed of it, and of us and the way we've dealt with this." She replied._

_We talked and slowly mad our way through the large mound of dishes left over from previous meals. As I dried the last dish I glanced at the kitchen clock. It read 2: 06. I nudged my mum._

"_I'm going to bed, it's after 2 o'clock, and you should sleep soon."_

"_Good night Cammie! See you in the morning!"_

_I kissed her cheek and stumbled happily upstairs and into my bed. I should have known that something would happen._

_The next morning I woke up to a loud knocking on the front door. I pulled on a silky robe and dashed downstairs. There at the door, standing in front of my mother, was Joe. It was __**him.**__ The one who pulled her heart out when it was already broken. And in his hand was a 45 caliber pistol. If I didn't mention this before, Joe was abusive. After he asked my mother to marry him he started acting like an a**hole. I know my mother would go ballistic if she heard me say that, but it describes him perfectly._

_I remember slipping back upstairs and calling the police. I heard a gunshot and my mum cry out._

_Almost everything else is a blur. I remember riding an ambulance, the police asking questions and changing clothes._

_A doctor told me that my mother just had a broken arm from the bullet and that she would be fine._

_And know my mother was telling me a 'true' (yeah right!) story about the time she broke her leg. And as I sat there in the stark white hospital room with the sun beating down on my back, I felt something I haven't in a while. I was happy._


End file.
